


drive our ships to new lands

by self-indulgent-drivel (half_a_league)



Series: immigrant song [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Origin Story, Eventual Romance, F/F, Faith and Magic, Gen, Helga-centric, Historical Accuracy, Hogwarts Founders Era, Pre-Slash, Religion and Magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-04-19 14:33:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14239347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/half_a_league/pseuds/self-indulgent-drivel
Summary: She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands. She is like the merchants' ships; she bringeth her food from afar. She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens. She considereth a field, and buyeth it: with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard. She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms. She percieveth that her merchandise is good: her candle goeth not out by night. She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff. Proverbs 31:13-19Here is the start of everything: the lambs and ewes, the heather sweet in the air, the sun on her face, and those three shapes cutting the horizon.





	1. The Huldra By the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Led Zepplin's "Immigrant Song". Alternate title- "Rowena and Helga's Excellent Gayventure" . Source material belongs to J.K. Rowling. Not just playing fast and loose with canon anymore, but completely rewriting it. This work is unbeta'd, so all mistakes are mine.

### Part One

Helga was dreaming, sweet grassy lamb dreams. She stood on the bluff, and cast her crook before her, and the ewes and lambs all turned to look. The whole world smelt of sun and blooming heather and salt from the sea, and Helga could live here forever, except the sky was darkening, and turning to stone, and she was suddenly stepping down into the weaving house, with its high glass windows, and the sun spilling in with her.

The crook in her hand was a distaff now, and she whirled the spindle with a skilled hand. Sister Gwendolyn was watching her, from very high up, and Helga found her hands were small again, and lost their skill, and she fumbled with the spindle until it started to turn on its own.

She gasped, and tried to hide it, fear cutting through her deeply, but Sister Gwendolyn had already seen. Slowly, before Helga’s astonished eyes, the Sister’s own distaff rose from the wall, and wool from the baskets came to meet it.

And then she was sitting on the stool at Sister Gwendolyn’s knee as the Sister wove, and rocked Mary Alyson in her cradle.

“Enchantment of your fellow man is the work of the Devil,” Sister Gwendolyn was telling her again. She reached out with her foot to give the cradle another gentle rock as the baby fussed. “God Himself gave us free will, and we mustn’t think ourselves above Him to take that away.”

“But the Bible said that witchcraft is the Devil’s work,” Helga found herself saying, “And Thomas told me I’d go to Hell for it.” Her lips still tasted of salt; he’d made her cry. She stared at her spindle, which had started working itself into neat loops without even a single touch.

“Go to Hell for what? Helping your mother with her washing, and me with the spinning? Thomas ought to pay more attention to his prayer book, and less to what your da, bless him, says.”

In the dream, Helga bit her lip and said nothing.

“What do we do with our gifts?” Sister Gwendolyn asked. Her own spindle was winding itself as she passed the shuttle across the loom. The threads were blue and green—Sister Gwendolyn was weaving the dress she had given to Helga at Yuletide.

“We spin, and we care for the crops, and we weave faster than any of the other sisters can, which means they can devote more time to studying and prayer and to helping those around us. To ease the lives of our friends and sisters as we may is a God-given gift, not a sign that the Devil is at work in you.” She squinted at Helga, and added with a smile, “No matter how naughty you may act, teasing your brothers and hiding your da’s nails, and sneaking honey out of the pot.”

Honey! The sunlight around her turned a thicker gold, and ran too slowly, and Helga, sitting in the refectory, watched it drip off her spoon into her bowl of porridge. So far away from the fire, the air was cold against her arms. She’d given Thomas her shawl, and he was huddled miserably beside her.

Fall was coming, and the frosts with it, and Mama and Da still weren’t back yet, and Sister Justina was growing vexed. Helga thought about taking Thomas, and Mary Alyson and Edward, and going back to Cairnshiel by herself before it snowed.

She rubbed her hand against her face, and wished she was back in bed, but at home, not the abbey, where the blankets were thick and _soft_ , and smelt of lavender, and her hand against her face tickled, and Helga opened her eyes again in her bed, awake, her heart pounding though she couldn’t say why.

The mattress crackled under her. Helga heaved herself to the side, pushing Mary Alyson’s cloud of hair out of her face, and sat up. The bell tolled six time, bright and sharp, and Helga tucked the blankets back around Alyson when she fussed, and swung her feet to the floor.

The stone was cool to stand on, but Helga didn’t let the floor fool her. It was nearly the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, and the days were overrun with sunshine, and sticky with heat. She’d left her shoes at Cairnshiel when they’d come down in the spring, and Sister Margaret was always complaining of Helga’s dirty feet, and never mind Sister Margaret didn’t have to go about chasing ewes and lambs all across the headlands and back.

She put on her kirtle and took up her shawl, but left the rest of her clothes were they lay folded on the chair. Thomas would be at his books today, under punishment of Sister Olympia, and so it would be no one’s business but Helga’s if she went about all morning with bare arms and uncovered hair.

Little Alyson was sleeping still, a hand curled under her cheek. Helga gathered her up against her shoulder, and soothed the sleepy whining. “Hush,” she said, “shush-a-bye.”

Sister Gwendolyn was in the hallway, waiting with her distaff tucked under one arm, and Helga’s crook under the other. “My, we’re sleepy today,” she said kindly to Alyson, who tucked her head against Helga’s neck and yawned. “And having a rather late start as well.” Her wry eyes sought Helga’s, and Helga could only smile helplessly. Months now, and odd, tangled dreams had plagued her.

She’d slept in a new bed, and drank chamomile before sleeping, and stopping eating later than dark, and put herbs in her pillow, and still the strange and twisting thoughts had her rising late and later. Her childhood, and strange and hazy faces and queer sights blurred together in storms until she woke damp with sweat and panting out in fear.

Sister Gwendolyn offered the crook, and took Alyson, and watched Helga carefully.

“Thank you, Sister,” Helga said. “Only, the bells this morning seemed so quiet! Surely whoever rung them must be afraid of waking the rooster! Or, perhaps, the Abbess?”

Sister Gwendolyn sighed. “Such cheek!” she admonished. “Comb your hair, and put on your shawl, and come and have some breakfast, before you go out to the pasture. If I’m to let you run about like a wild thing half the day, then you must act civilized indoors, or Abbess Theoclia might be tempted to take the heathen in our midst into her own hands!”

“Yes,” Helga said, laughing, “if she ever gets out of bed! And I shan’t come to breakfast, there’s apples half-ripe in the orchard, and the surliest ewes must already be unbearable in waiting for me to come. The sun’s half-up already as it is!”

“And whose fault is that?” Sister Gwendolyn asked, but she was smiling, and she touched Helga’s cheek as Helga went clattering past her. “I’ll send your brother with some dinner, then, should he please Sister Olympia enough to be taken from his books a while.”

Helga knew Thomas missed playing shepherd-boy, and was greatly bitter that Sister Gwendolyn had given purview of the flock for half the day to Helga, lest “she burst out of her skin with ebullience by the noon-meal and never recover” so she only agreed with a hum, and kissed sleepy Alyson goodbye.

Outside the sky stretched wide, powdered with clouds like tufts of wool, and Helga pulled her shawl off her shoulders and wrapped it around her waist, and took off across the damp grass to the sheep pasture.

The sun climbed higher as Helga led the sheep out, past the fences that held them in the night. She knotted her skirt up, and scaled the low-rising hills that dotted the headland in its march toward the sea. Sister Olympia said they were burial cairns, and Sister Margaret said they were fairy mounds, and Helga and Thomas agreed only that they were great fun to run up and down.

The wild fields spread below Helga, bedecked with summer flowers, and an endless march of green. By the time she stopped, far enough away to be out of breath and sweating with it, the abbey itself was a small speck in the distance, safely tucked away from the world and those who might trouble it.

Almost grown lambs kicked their heels, and harassed their peers, and their mothers. Helga was forced to break a pair up with sharp smacks across the rump, and laughed as the lambs jogged away, crying and awfully offended.

Helga laughed again, and bound after them for the sheer joy of it, tearing through the low grass, and throwing herself down at the top of another grassy mound, panting happily. If Sister Gwendolyn were less understanding, or Sister Margaret less frustrated, she might even now be trapped at the loom, or at the copying tables, or in the chapel, praying for the multitude of sins the Abbess was certain Helga had transgressed in.

_Thank you, O Lord, for letting me be out here in the light where I might feel your sun upon my face and have your creations all around me._

Helga dozed in the sun, dreamless, and woke a little later, hot about the face, to stand and check the sheep for any who had gotten in trouble while she slept. Thomas or one of the mousy little novitiates would come in the afternoon and bring the sheepdogs to gather the flock back, so all Helga had to do was listen for cries of trouble, and keep a keen eye for dumb lambs wandering too close to the cliff edge, and braid great big handfuls of loose wildflowers into her hair.

The headland stretched into the distance, a day’s walk down, and Cairnshiel perched at the end of it. Da had dug a pond between the abbey and the cottage, working deep into the earth until water sprang up, and Sister Gwendolyn had come with her distaff to make sure it stayed full. The sheep strayed there as the late morning went on, and Helga went with them, drinking water in big, dripping handfuls and splashing it about her face to ease the warmth in it.

When she stood and slicked the wisps of hair about her face back with damp hands, flowers fell tumbling to the grass, but Helga hardly noticed because in the motley blue distance where water met sky, three shapes cut the horizon.

It was queer, to feel afraid after such a sweet and wonderful morning. It cut her stomach more sharply that a knife, and Helga grabbed at her crook where she’d tossed it uncaring to the ground, and took slow, stumbling steps closer to the edge.

A wind came up from the ocean then, cutting through her thin kirtle and blowing her braids out behind her. Some of the ewes lifted their heads, and made a nervous sort of baa, and Helga wished suddenly she’d thought to take one of the sheepdogs with her.

The wind picked up, lashing now, and the shapes on the water became boats, rushing toward the shore, their square sails like nothing she had ever seen before. They bulged furiously with wind, spots of deep orange and red against the blue, and Helga's heart leapt in her throat.

Scrambling, she ran down the headland, watching the cliff edge dip and shorten, watching the jagged rocks below turned slowly into narrow stretches of tide pools and sandy beach, tucked behind long arms of rock going out to sea. She was staring at the cove where Da had taken her to play when she was small, and they lived all year at Cairnshiel.

It was where a fishing boat had washed up late last fall. The men, salt-stained and shaking, had wept in the church and lit a dozen candles for Mary and Saint Christopher and Jesu-child, and Helga and Thomas had been made to give up their beds and sleep on mats on the floor, and there!

The sea-path the fishermen had climbed, dazed, before stumbling their way down to the abbey. One of them had fallen and died on the boulders below. Helga swallowed to remember the blood on the rocks. She and Sister Gwendolyn had climbed down later that day, under the Abbess’s order, and working slavishly had cut smooth, steep steps out of grass and rock alike.

“Now a cripple could climb that with ease!” Sister Gwendolyn had declared afterwards, as Helga poked with interest at a crab half-hidden in one of the pools.

Now Helga studied the sea frantically, and stared at the ships, so much closer now, and heading towards the cove. Cripples indeed! She clutched at her hair with a hand and offered up a prayer.

_O Lord in all your wisdom, if those ships be filled with who I think fills them, then with all your mercy and grace lead them to be dashed upon the rocks!_

And with one last push of the wind, spraying salt across Helga's face, the ships came ashore, one by one.

Never mind the Lord’s wisdom then! Helga was wise enough to know what to do on her own! She ran back for the sheep, stirring them up frantically as she circled them, and shouted, and delivered several liberal smacks with the crook.

“Up!” she shrieked at a stubborn ewe who only glared from her soft doze in the grass. “Up, get up you dung-headed fool!”

The other sheep were no long milling, and some of the more nervous lambs had started off for the abbey, looking back several times over their shoulders as they went. Helga shouted several ewes ahead of her, and wished she could be running with the lambs.

But blast if she was going to let go of even a single ewe! They needed the wool, and if Helga could only just get them to _move_ , if she could make it to the abbey before those men in the ships, she and Sister Gwendolyn and the Abbess could figure out what to do.

Suddenly, her crook sparked and spat ember like a fire, and a deep boom shuddered across the ground as Helga smacked the butt of it against the ground. The ewes screamed, an awful sound, and Helga shrieked, and up staggered the ewes who had been sleeping, and the ones who had been standing scattered toward the abbey in their rocking, crooked run.

Panting, Helga slung a glance behind herself, to the half-hidden cove, and gasped.

Coming up from the sea-path was a trail of men, some carrying some object between them, and others bearing what _must_ be swords at their hips, and the first of them ranging far ahead of the others, his hair streaming behind him like a long black banner in the wind.

Helga, with her crook in her hand, and her hair bedecked with flowers, and her skirt tied up about her hip, and still half a dozen ewes staggering about behind her, stared in panic.

She had been right, against all Heavenly odds.

North-men! Raiders! She and Thomas had caught glimpses of square, distant sails before, and traded chilling whispers about the Abbey of Kells, but Sister Olympia had caught them, and smacked them roundly about the heads for nonsense, and when Thomas had started crying at dinner, the Abbess had promised that they wouldn’t come to harm from anything like that. Even Sister Wendy had said that in her forty years, she’d never once seen a North-man come ashore.

The crook was only bare wood, but it was Helga’s—she had made it under her father’s watchful eye. She could spin spells from it, but could she fight off a man with a sword? Or the string of the other men behind the first, and Helga was glad now that she had tied up her skirts, despite the immodesty of it. She could run now, if she had to, never mind the sheep to be slaughtered, and warn the abbey.

But it was the queerest feeling when she tried, as though Sister Wendy had stuck her to the flagstones again. She couldn’t move her dusty feet, couldn’t even lift them off the grass. She could only swallow frantically, and wet her lips, and brandish the crook as though she had any idea what to do with it beyond castigate a naughty lamb, or move along a fat ewe.

Time seemed to slow. The sun moved behind the clouds, and the world chilled, and the man in front came close enough that Helga could see his eyes, blue like the sky, and his fair face, and oh, it wasn’t a man at all.

She was in trousers, like a man, and had a long coat instead of a blouse, and a sword Helga thought hysterically must be bigger than Mary Alyson, and in her hand she had a thin, shining stick, which she waved at Helga with a short, guttural word.

And Helga could move again! That nasty North-woman had cursed her into place, and Helga shrieked, and kicked her heels up, and turned without a second thought, scattering sheep about her as she raced down the winding, grassy cairns, never mind the shouting behind her that almost sounded like decent, civilized speech!


	2. A Strange and Wondrous New Spell

Helga tripped in the dirt near the door of the kitchen, and went sprawling at the feet of the startled novitiate who’d just started out the door.

“God be-damn every rock and clod!” Helga howled, and tried to clutch at her bare foot and stagger upright at the same time.

The novitiate gasped, hands over her mouth, and squawked, “Helga!”

Helga slammed her crook into the ground, and pulled herself up. “Never mind that!” she shouted back at the girl. “Go find the Abbess and Sister Gwendolyn, and tell them there’s North-men landed on the beach!”

“North-men?” the novitiate wailed. “But, but—”

“Oh!” Helga shrieked, and flew past her into the kitchen, giving the sister standing at the fireplace a start. “Where’s the Abbess?” she demanded frantically.

“The Reverend Mother is in the Chapter house, but she ought to be down to the frater for dinner soon.” The sister shot a bewildered glance at the novitiate, who came weeping in the door. “What in the world did you—”

“There’s no _time_!” Helga said, and tore out of the room.

Panting, she ran through the abbey, heading desperately towards the weaving room. As she got closer, she could hear Mary Alyson’s shrieking laughter, and Sister Gwendolyn’s teasing voice, and Helga vowed to herself she’d never let that terrible North-woman get close enough to curse either of them.

She burst through the doors just as the click-clack of the loom started up again, and Sister Gwendolyn stood in alarm as she caught sight of her.

“Helga,” she said, and then, “Whatever are you wearing?”

She’d forgotten about her skirt, and the flowers, and her shawl still about her waist. Helga looked down at herself, then up with disbelieving eyes. “It doesn’t matter!” she shrieked, and Mary Alyson burst into tears.

“Honestly, Helga,” Sister Gwendolyn said, and went to console the baby, and her disapproval hurt, and Helga couldn’t find the words to convey her own franticness onto her, except to gasp out, “Sister, _please_ , there’s North-men landing in the cove!”

“North-men,” Sister Gwendolyn said, and slowly set Alyson back upon the floor where she wailed even louder. She appraised Helga, and went to the wall where her distaff rested. “If I find you’ve gone sun-mad,” she said, and Helga stamped her foot.

“They’re there!” she said. “Killing all the sheep, like as not, and then they’ll move right onto us! We must do something!”

“Take down your skirt, to start, though you may keep the flowers,” Sister Gwendolyn said, and drew wool from the basket to her fingertips, and began to dress her distaff. “If Margaret sees you, she’ll have a fit, and we won’t stop hearing about it until the end times. Then go take your sister to Sister Olympia, and tell her that she and Thomas and Mary Alyson must wait in the sacristy until I send you for them.”

“North-men do not just attack us,” Sister Gwendolyn said, when Helga let out only an agonized whine. “Now go secure your siblings and my friend, and come back to me that I might show you _why_ they do not act so.”

Mary Alyson was weeping still as Helga scooped her up roughly, and set off at a jog for the copy-room, tugging furiously at her skirt with one hand. “Da says never tie a knot you can’t un-tie in only a moment,” Helga told her over her wails. “Now I know why, and too late at that!”

The copy-room was silent but for the labor of quills on parchment, and the soft breaths of the copiers. Sister Olympia was framed in light, bent of Thomas’s work with her thin hand curled over his shoulder, and she looked up in surprise as Helga thumped at the door with her fist and swung it open.

“Sorry, Sister,” she said, and tumbled Mary Alyson into Sister Olympia’s arms. “Only there’s North-men coming, and Sister Gwendolyn says to take Thomas and Alyson and the others into the sacristy and wait there ‘til someone comes.”

“North-men?” Thomas demanded with wide eyes, and Helga took a moment to ruffle his hair.

“Aye,” she said, “And Sister Gwendolyn’s off to fight them, I take it, and I’ve got to get back to her.”

“Everyone up!” Sister Olympia was saying as whispers broke across the room. “Take the pages that are dry, all of them, and come with me quickly.” To Helga, she said, “Be careful, and be fast of foot,” as she ushered Thomas from his chair and toward the door.

“Yes, Sister,” Helga said dutifully, and went away again, running once she was out of the room, dodging around the stream of sisters coming toward them, and toward the sacristy.

The bells were ringing now, loud frantic bashes with no fear of waking anyone, not even the dead. Helga clapped her hands across her ears as she darted across the cloister and back to the kitchen, and yelled, “Sister, wait!” as Sister Gwendolyn hurried out the kitchen door into the yard.

She stopped a moment obligingly once she saw it was Helga, and took her by the arm. “We must hurry to meet them,” she said, and started to drag her along. “If they get into the orchard, we’ll have a hard time getting them back out.”

Helga threw a glance behind herself as they ran, wanting to catch sight of the bell-tower through the trees, and saw instead the Abbess, with Sister Justina supporting her arm, both of them dutifully rushing behind them. Their distaffs clattered as they came.

“That’s the Abbess!” she hissed at Sister Gwendolyn, who nodded grimly.

“She rarely uses her own gifts, as you well know,” the sister said. “But she’s fearsome when she does, like the righteous fire raining from the sky. May the Father help these North-men if they’re coming to us for trouble.”

They wended through the apple trees, slowing until the others caught up, and broke together past the orchard wall into the afternoon sun. The pastures were before them, climbing the gentle rise of the headland, and only a few sheep dotted them.

“Girl!” the Abbess said. “You’ve left my sheep behind!” Her outrage was clear across her face, and Helga laughed before she could help herself at the ridiculousness of it.

“I wouldn’t have, if only they could carry messages,” Helga said, and caught Sister Justina’s crack across the head with barely a flinch.

“Show some respect to the Reverend Mother!”

“Enough!” Sister Gwendolyn said. “They’re coming.”

And they were. Helga stood on her toes and braced her crook for balance, and craned her neck to see them better—that long and terrible line of men trooping in from the sea, and the woman with the dark hair leading them.

“That one’s a woman,” she told Sister Gwendolyn. “She cursed my feet right to the grass so I couldn’t run, only she didn’t use a distaff. T’was like nothing I have ever seen.”

“They’ve wands then,” Sister Justina said grimly.

“What’s a wand?” Helga asked, staring at the coming train.

“Hush, Helga,” Sister Gwendolyn said, then fell silent herself as the Abbess spoke.

“It’s a stick,” she told Helga. “Those North-men use it to cast spells the likes of which I’ve never seen before. You’ll learn something before the day is out, if you watch them.”

What comfort Helga felt about having the Abbess with them fled. She didn’t sound afraid—she never sounded afraid of anything—but she didn’t sound unconcerned like she usually did either, like only the Lord’s own words were worth paying attention to.

They stood in uncomfortable silence those last few seconds as the North-men came closer, close enough to see their faces.

Then the Abbess brought her distaff up, and Justina crossed it with her own with a clack, and the dirt at the edge of the pasture walk was suddenly full of white and holy light.

“That’s close enough, I think!” the Abbess said firmly.

Obligingly, they stopped, and a man in richly dyed clothes came up to join the woman, who’d put up a hand to halt the others. This close, Helga could see all of them were richly dressed, in furs despite the heat and in wool dyed blue and a deep green and a cheerful yellow, and this stunned her—the trim about the woman’s coat was a purple so fine and beautiful that Helga's fingers itched to touch it.

The woman was watching them, and she smiled a little when Helga caught her eye. The man beside her noticed, and said something in their language which made the other man laugh, and made the woman turn instead toward the Abbess.

“Hail, mother,” she said, and bowed, and withdrew the stick from her sleeve.

Helga jerked back in surprise, because of the words and the voice both. North-men speaking in a civilized tongue! And the woman, no, the _girl’s_ voice was so sweet that she couldn’t be much older than Helga herself.

And now Helga knew to look, she could see youth in the unlined fair face and the red cheeks and the long unbound hair. Helga gripped at her crook with both hands, and tore her eyes away from the girl’s face and made herself watch the girl’s hands instead. She stared at the wand, and shifted impatiently.

Only, she didn’t watch for long, because the girl bent over and put her wand on the ground! As if it were nothing, as if anyone might ever leave their _distaff_ in the dirt.

Helga gasped, and trembled with incredulity, and only settled as Sister Gwendolyn laid a hand upon her shoulder and squeezed. But even the Abbess seemed taken aback by it, and the girl faltered as she saw their faces.

“God be with you,” the Abbess managed to creak out after a long, tense moment.

The man said something else, and the girl nodded and told them, “We come bearing tithe for your lord.”

A chest was brought from the trail of men, and set well before the white line laid upon the earth. The man who brought the chest retreated, staring at them all the while, and the man beside the girl came and opened the lid and threw it back.

It was filled to spilling with silver coins, and it was not small chest. Helga gasped again, and looked at Sister Gwendolyn frantically, but she only stared ahead at the North-men, her mouth a thin line. Helga glanced at the chest, then the men, and thought that it was surely not real, that it was fairy coin and these people had come not from the sea but from the cairns.

“The Lord has no need for silver coin,” the Abbess said, “for he has things worth much more than that, which no coin could buy. No, you come wanting something.”

Helga waited, but the Abbess said no more, and the men were looking at them, and at each other as though growing uneasy. The man in front of them said something, and he and the girl argued a moment.

Helga leaned over to Sister Gwendolyn and said very quietly, “I thought them much more fearsome when I saw them. If I’d known then, I’d have turned them away at the sea-path.”

“And lost a head for the trying,” Sister Justina cut in. “They’ve swords, child, and you’ve only half a brain. The entire Host wouldn't be enough to help us if you lost the other half.”

“Sister, thou shalt love thy neighbor,” Sister Gwendolyn said tightly, but her clasp about her distaff lessened a little, her knuckles going white to tan again.

The North-men had stopped arguing. The man had stepped back, and the girl had made room, and the six men carrying that strange and bulky load that Helga had seen before came forward, and laid it upon the ground, and Helga's breath caught in her throat.

She moved before she even knew she meant to, and stumbled reaching for the pale throat to see if his heart was still beating, never mind Sister Gwendolyn’s cry of, “Helga!” and the hands that tried to grasp her back.

Only, it was like Edward again, laid before her gasping with his glassy eyes showing only the whites, and she found the pulse with ease, and touched the chest that housed the stuttering heart, and looked up and said, “He lives! Sister Gwendolyn, he lives still!”

“Lord preserve me from this child!” Sister Gwendolyn said aloud, and came, and helped Helga clear the man’s hair from his face. The Abbess was speaking harshly to the girl. “You will come, and him, and the sling-bearers, and the rest of you shall stay right here!” as Helga reached for her crook, and watched as blue light rose from the man, brighter than even the sunlight, and hung above his body, and pulsed and beat softly like a heart.

What a precious thing, that heartbeat was. It flared neatly and true, not stuttering and galloping like the man’s had, but Helga was sure it was his! She kept her eyes on it as the men hurried to gather the sling, and the Abbess and Sister Justina unwove the white lines from the earth, and she looked away from it only when Sister Gwendolyn took her by the arm and helped her turn and stagger toward the abbey.

“You!” Sister Gwendolyn gasped, pulling Helga forward. “Have not half the sense given to a goose!”

Helga staggered, and coughed roughly, and groaned out, “He must have been struck by lightning, Sister. He was so terribly burned!”

“Never mind him,” Sister Gwendolyn said firmly. “You’re going straight to the infirmary to lie down, while I try and untangle his heartbeat from yours, you little fool. God forbid him passing while you are still twined so, and taking you with him.” She crossed herself furiously, and tugged Helga on through the trees.

Behind them was the great commotion of six men carrying a seventh through a small path that was not strictly a path while the Abbess yelled at them a great deal, and the girl tried to pacify the Abbess. Helga tried to turn and look—she greatly wanted to see the girl get smacked by Sister Justina—but Sister Gwendolyn muscled Helga on, past the barn and into the kitchen and through the cloister, where the bells had fallen silent, and no one was about.

“We have to tell Sister Olympia it’s alright!” Helga gasped out, thinking at once of Thomas huddled small and afraid with Mary Alyson crying on his lap.

“ _We_ must do nothing except find a way to keep that man and you alive. The Reverend Mother will decide when it is safe for the others to leave the sacristy.”

Sister Gwendolyn swung the infirmary doors open ahead of them with a sweep of her distaff, and ushered Helga inside. The wide stone floor and low beds glowed in the late sun, and Helga put up a hand to shield her eyes of it as she was swept into a bed near the center of the room.

“Stay there,” Sister Gwendolyn said. She jerked away Helga's crook, never mind Helga shrieking, “Give that back, please!” and gave a thump to her arm when she tried to go after it.

“Stay!” Sister Gwendolyn said as if she, Helga, were just a sheep dog, and Helga folded her arms across her face and frowned furiously.

“This is poor reward for warning the whole abbey,” Helga muttered, and listened with some interest as the noise crowd came closer and closer.

“Aye, and fitting punishment for sticking your nose where it didn’t belong, casting who-knows-what on that poor man.”

Sister Gwendolyn was stripping the bed next to Helga's, tossing pillows to another bed and tearing the sheets off with great hassle. She bared the mattress, and left to the back of the long hall to fetch at bottles, clinking them and muttering to herself direly. Helga pushed herself up, and watched with interest as she brought back a wide, empty dish and all manner of bottles.

Helga was rarely sick, and never injured beyond cuts and scrapes to her bare feet in the spring and summer, and had little reason to be in the infirmary. Sister Gwendolyn, after Helga had kept Edward from dying of lightning strike, had declared Helga was not ready to learn the art of healing, and turned her again to spinning and the loom. But Helga felt that was wildly unfair, especially considering Edward was now wandering around an abbey in France—copying for a bishop!—and not lying prone and unconscious in his bed still.

“I did well enough with Edward,” she said sulkily, in case Sister Gwendolyn had forgotten.

“You almost died,” Sister Gwendolyn said. “And forgive me if I like you better breathing than not. Now be quiet, Helga, or I shall send you away completely, and take my chances!”

And there, through the infirmary doors came the men with the sling and laid it upon the bed, and the girl who was still trying to sooth the Abbess, and the rich man, who was looking about with interest, and Sister Justina, who was pinning back her veil and rolling up her sleeves.

Sister Gwendolyn grabbed one of the men by the arm, and shoved the empty dish at him. “Go to the garden and get me snails,” she snapped. “Fill this dish and be quick about it.”

The man turned a wide-eyed stare at the girl, who rushed to translate, speaking harshly as he hesitated. But the man took two of the others, and they both slipped out the door, turning concerned glances behind themselves as they went.

Meanwhile, Sister Justina had taken up her distaff again, and was drawing wool down from it, spinning it between her fingers and pulling away short thin pieces to place them across the black and red-cracked chest.

Helga thought she had done the same under Sister Gwendolyn’s careful instruction when it was Edward lying on the bed, but she remembered little from that day, and so she struggled into sitting, feeling short of breath, and watched closer.

There, and half the chest was covered in short strands. Sister Justina cracked her distaff against the floor, and snapped “Morphendio Mathe!”

The strands of wool turned to worms, white and thick and writhing, and they crawled across the bleeding, blackened flesh furiously, eating at it. The men shouted fearfully, and clutched each other, and the girl turned away and retched upon the floor.

“Get her out, please!” Sister Gwendolyn said, and the Abbess put an arm across the girl’s shoulders and tried to draw her away. But she was straightening, and wiping her mouth, and told the Sisters, “But I am the only one who knows what happened.”

Silence stretched, broken only by the wet noises the worms made. Finally, Sister Justina said, “Then send the others away, and sit where we can see you.”

The girl turned at once and said something to the men that made them leave, some of them grateful for it, sweating wildly, and some of them fingering their swords as they went. Even the rich man left, and the Abbess with them, and she shut the infirmary door behind herself.

And now the girl was staggering to Helga's bed, and sitting, and staring at the Sisters as they worked. The worms ate quickly, bearing black flesh into red and pink muscle that glistened damply, and Sister Gwendolyn followed behind them, sprinkling brown powder that dried up the leaking blood, studying the burns very carefully.

“How many times he struck?” she demanded as she worked.

“Three, mother,” the girl said, “and has not opened his eyes beyond how they are now, nor spoken since then, and that was nigh on two days ago.”

Finally, the worms chased the last of the burns away, leaving a red and pink tree of scars across his chest. Sister Justina banished them, and turned to the door to open it and shout for the snails. Helga wanted to laugh a little at her furious shrieking at the loitering lot of men, but the burned man was still lying there, and Helga swallowed, and remembered that Edward has seemed easy to heal, too, until they had tried to wake him and learned the lightning had near boiled his brain to mush.

Cautiously, as the Sisters were distracted with the judicious application of snails to the burns, arguing fiercely, “Put another one there!” and “That fool didn’t bring nearly enough, his chest is half-gone!” Helga reached out a little, like she might through her crook or her distaff, and felt for the man.

The hair on her arms raised, and the girl, perched at the edge of Helga's bed, turned wide blue eyes to stare at her. “What?” she started, but Helga said fiercely, “Hush, or I might hurt him,” and turned toward the man again.

“—do the best we can,” Sister Gwendolyn was saying, “but if he doesn’t wake, they will simply have to accept that.”

“They’re behind the wards,” Sister Justina said. “We don’t know _what_ they’ll do, but I doubt accepting will have any part in it!” She shot a glance at them, no, at the girl, and Helga let a breath go.

The man would wake. She could make him wake, the way she had made Edward. She was a year older now, and much more disciplined. Even Sister Margaret agreed she no longer wriggled about during Mass, only knelt quietly in prayer and solemn reflection.

The ball of blue light above the man's heart beat a little faster as Helga focused. She watched it pulse, and felt her eyes swim and blur, and while staring through a glass of tears, she caught sight for just a moment a ball of _red_ light at the man’s head, which hung silent and static as a lump of clay, instead of a churning and moving like the blue light.

The man had been struck by lightning, surely he had _something_ to think about, even if it was only to rail madly about why. Helga thought if she was ever struck herself, she’d lie there under the snails and come up with a thousand and one reasons why the Lord would no longer be thanksgiving from her again!

But no, the red light was still, and flickered in and out of sight as Helga crossed her eyes trying to see it. Blast and bother Sister Gwendolyn for taking her crook away—she’d surely want to know why if Helga got up to get it. But it wasn’t right to leave the man like that, sleeping the rest of his life because he’d had rotten luck.

Helga had half-filled memories of the night she had thrown herself across Edward’s body and brought him back gasping into the thinking world, but she could scarcely remember how she did it, only the panic and the surety that she must. The man looked poorly, lying there, but it stirred little in her.

And then the girl let out a harsh sob, her hand over her mouth, looking as if she might cry, and Helga's own heart gave a tremble. The girl loved the man just as much as Helga loved Edward.

God managed to love all his creatures, even Sister Margaret, even Helga when she was naughty. Helga closed her eyes, and thought about the peaceful quiet of the church and the warmth she felt as she said the Pater Noster. She thought about the sun on her face before she dozed off that morning, and how it might have been like God’s own touch, warm and kind. That same touch had fallen upon the boats, and all the North-men in them. Helga thought she might find some love for this stranger, for God could find love for him, too.

They were to use their gifts to ease those around them, and it would ease the man to be healed and ease the girl to see him well again. Helga _wanted_ to love him, and ease him.

She steadied herself, and reached out again.

If Helga had done it before when she was small, then she could do it now. She reached, grasping, and the room crackled as though there might be lightning then, _inside the infirmary_ , and the sisters turned toward her at once.

“Helga!” Sister Gwendolyn said, eyes wide, but the crook was flying through the air, and clapping into Helga’s outstretched hand, and Sister Justina said firmly, “Let her try, if it means putting these men beyond our wards again.”

The sisters stared at each other, and Helga thought Sister Gwendolyn might say something not at all charitable, but she only swallowed, and came to kneel before Helga, and wrap a hand around Helga's fingers on the crook.

“You do not have to,” she told Helga, but Helga thought she did. There were things she could do that Sister Gwendolyn could not, that left the sister mystified. This was one of them—Edward had only woken to Helga's touch, no matter what other pastes and potions and spells the others had tried.

Helga took the crook away from Sister Gwendolyn carefully, and watched the air above the man’s head until her eyes watered, trying to see the ball of red light. But she couldn’t and she raised the crook, not really knowing what to do, and it cracked down onto the stone as wood met wood for the North-girl had brought her wand to meet it, and she said a foreign word roughly and heat pushed through the wood to Helga's hands.

Light filled the air, not just the ball above the man, but glowing spots of light above them all. Helga gasped, and looked about with wonder, and saw the girl haloed in blue so great and deep it was nearly purple, her eyes like fire in the dark.

And then Helga looked at the man lying beyond her, and saw the balls of red and blue and gold and holy white. All of them but the red ball moved, and squirmed and pulsed, and Helga looked at them and thought it was like invisible hands were kneading dough. There were invisible hands on all but the red ball.

Her crook clattered to the floor. She stood, and stumbled to the bed, and cried out “Cerespersio!”

She reached for the light, and lay her hands upon it instead of through it, and pulled it between her fingers, fire sparking under her hands, and her whole head dizzy with color and motion. But the ball only hung still when she let go of it, and so she took it up again, and pulled it and stretched it, and thumped it against an invisible table, watching it go flat, and gathered it up again and worked it until she was breathless and her hands were numb and aching, buzzing as though her bones had turned to bees.

The ball slipped from her fingers—she couldn’t hold it any longer—and she cried out as if it might fall, but it only hung in place above the man’s head, and moved, slowly, then with more surety, as though the same invisible hands worked it as well. Angel hands, Helga was sure, or the hands of the strange and divine creature that made one’s soul, and she stumbled back into the bed, and slid alarmingly, and rough, warm hands grabbed her and pulled her upright, and the room thundered with the noise of wood on stone, and the light faded intensely, until only the half-forgotten rich gold of afternoon sun came dripping in the windows.

Helga blinked, and uncrossed her eyes with effort, and shrieked a little when the bed moved underneath her. Only it wasn’t the bed, she found, when she jerked her head around. She was sitting on the girl’s lap, like a weeping baby needing soothing, and Helga slid off of her, blushing furiously, and wobbled in place.

Sister Gwendolyn grabbed at Helga as she tried to stand, and Helga stared at her. She was faded like a ghost, or the whole world was. The room behind Sister Gwendolyn had turned white and pale grey as if a fine snow had covered it. Helga touched the grey sleeve of Sister Gwendolyn’s habit, and stared at her fingers and found them covered as well.

“Flour,” sister Justina announced, shaking out her own habit briskly. And then to Helga, “I see Sister Olympia’s Latin lessons haven’t gone amiss.”

“Flour?” Helga asked, and let herself be sat on the bed.

“You’ve covered the whole room in it, though that _is_ a rather tame price to heal the man.”

“For which I thank the Lord,” Sister Justina added tartly. She was going around the room with her distaff now, spinning it in the air, and pulling the flour from the floor, the beds, the man’s face, which Helga started at to see him turn aside on his own.

“Oh!” Helga said. “Sister Gwendolyn, he moved!”

“Aye,” Sister Gwendolyn said, paying him no attention, or the North-girl, who’d moved to hold tightly at his hand. “Let out a right snore, he did, as soon as you let go of whatever you were holding above him. It half scared the life out of me, and at my age you haven’t got much life left to spare.”

She had a damp cloth in her hand, and attacked Helga's face with it, not giving her a chance to reply as she was scrubbed at harshly.

“Hey!” Helga said, and tried to bat her away, and learned her arms were too tired to lift, as though she’d been pitching hay all afternoon. 

“You’re exhausted, no doubt,” Sister Gwendolyn said. “And in sore need of a bath. Tomorrow, it’s the pond for you, my dear!”

And then she was hustling Helga up, tugging off her kirtle, never mind the strangers in the room! Helga yelped, and tried to wrestle away, but she was stuffed into a linen shift before she could try, and then into a fresh bed that only faintly smelled of flour and yeast, and Sister Gwendolyn was pulling the covers over her, and doing something with her distaff that made her eyes very hard to keep open.

“Hush, now,” Sister Gwendolyn said, and Sister Justina’s dry voice said, “At least we’ve little worry of her running off to wrestle trolls, or fight a North-man bare-handed if she’s asleep. Very clever, Gwendolyn.” And Helga tried to protest the injustice of it—she’d never be stupid enough to take on a troll!—but the words came out only as a soft whisper of breath, and she turned her head upon the pillow, and drifted away again to the meadow, and the sheep, and the soft smell of grass and sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact! snail slime actually does have medicinal value, and they did use snails as a method to treat burns in the past and now. i think that's really neat.


	3. The Burn-Man Speaks

“Girl!” a gruff voice said. “Girl!”

Helga jerked awake, and lay still in the dark, listening intently for the church bells. But there was no tolling, and that voice, a man’s voice, came again.

“Girl, you’ve left finger marks in my brain!” the voice said, and Helga sighed deeply, and heaved herself over onto her side to look.

And there was a man, the burn-man, who had sat himself up in bed and was scowling at her furiously. “I dreamt of sheep!” he told her. “And now my mouth tastes of grass, and my fingers hurt as though something has bitten them.”

“It’s from the spinning,” Helga said sleepily, and scrubbed a hand across her eyes. “It makes your hands ache if you aren’t used to it.”

She considered the man again, and he considered her back. “They were very nice sheep,” he said finally. “I have seen worse sheep, and yours were a sight better than those by far.”

“Thank you,” Helga said politely, and swung her feet to the edge of the bed. Sister Gwendolyn always left a water jug and a wooden cup when she put someone to bed, and Helga fumbled in the dim light to pour the cup full. She drank deeply, and saw the man watching her hungrily, so she refilled the cup, and took it to him.

It had the quality of a dream—with the rush mat warm under her feet, the linen shift so white it looked as though it was glowing—and she felt though she was floating across the floor, The burn-man took the water, and drank, and spilled it down his beard, and poured half the cup over his head, sputtering and shaking himself like a dog.

Helga yelped, and jumped back, and glared at him as water dripped down his nose and across his pale pink chest. “You’ll have to sleep in damp blankets now,” she said furiously. “I won’t be helping you change them, and Sister Justina will just smack you and make you sleep where you are.”

“I could sleep in any bed,” the burn-man said, and laughed. “There are a hundred beds here in this hall, and after the day I have had, no one can deny me my pick!”

There were twelve, and Helga knew that because every month she had to go and strip down the sheets on each, and wash them. Every month, or sooner if someone had been sleeping there!

But she still looked about herself at the hall in the dim, cool moonlight, and wondered how the burn-man saw it, wondered if the beds marched off into the horizon, and the windows stretched away for an age, and the whole room felt queerly still like he’d stepped right from sea onto the rush mats on the floor.

The man had found his own water pitcher, and was drinking more down in great gulps. “Ah!” he said. “This water is so sweet!” He eyed Helga over the rim of the cup, and said, “Everything in this place is sweet—the air, the grass, your little sheep, the honey.” Satisfied, he heaved a great sigh, and said, “Mayhap you need fishermen, or warriors, that I never have to leave.”

Helga walked around the side of his bed, and sat on the one next to it, pulling her legs up and wrapping her arms around them and resting her chin on her knees. “We eat fish most Fridays,” she said. “I don’t know who gets it for us. I never asked.”

She considered his dark eyes, and the cup in his hands that he turned and turned. “The last time there were fishermen in the abbey, one died,” she said, only thinking too late that it might upset him.

But the man only sat back among his pillows, and said peaceably, “All men die eventually. I almost died just now, when mighty Thor struck me on the water. Here, among all this quiet and green? It would not be so bad to die here.”

Helga had never thought of it before. “Oh,” she said at last, and wriggled her toes. “But you didn’t die,” she offered, unsure of what to say. She didn’t know who Thor was, or why he was making people lightning struck, and none of the sisters ever spoke of dying, except that the Lord would be there, and Mary, and probably baby Jesus.

“No, I didn’t.” The burn-man stroked his beard with a hand, and stared at her thoughtfully. “You didn’t let me die, girl, and now I dream of sheep instead of ships, and honey like sunlight pouring over my hands.”

Helga hid a yawn behind her knees, and shut her eyes. She could see the sun behind them, and the ball of blue light that had linked her and the burn-man together, and the white-grey moonlight turning her eyelids pink.

“People shouldn’t die from lightning,” Helga said sleepily. “It’s like dying of tripping, or bee stings, or choking on a cherry pit. People shouldn’t die just because they’ve got poor luck.”

The burn-man laughed again. “Maybe those people have offended the god of luck,” he said, and Helga heard him drinking from the cup again. “Or the god of thunder, or bees, or the god of feasting.”

“There’s no gods of those,” Helga sighed. “God’s the god of everything, even luck and everything else, and Sister Justina’ll smack you if she hears you talking about other gods and make you read Exodus again. Only, I don’t think the Lord minds if people only talk about it, because he’s got all the saints, see, and they’re like little gods.”

“Fascinating,” the burn-man said. “Maybe I’ll speak to your Reverend Mother about that, little sister, and see what she has to say.”

“Oh,” Helga yawned. “I’m not a Sister, I only live here.”

“Really,” the burn-man said. He hummed, thoughtfully, and after a moment said, “Perhaps—” but then silence stretched instead of words, and that was all he said.

Helga ground her forehead against her knees and waited.

“Well,” he started again, and Helga yawned again, and he laughed. “Well, it will have to wait until morning, I see. Go back to bed, girl, and dream of ships and sunshine that stays sunshine, and see if you like it.”

“Alright,” Helga agreed, and uncurled herself slowly, and stumbled back into her bed. The blankets were cool now, and she nestled among them, and half-wished for the warm, limp weight of Mary Alyson, and fell asleep again, her hand curled under her cheek.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If J.K. Rowling had given us more characters in the founders era, i wouldn't have to make all these dang OCs, and i wouldn't get to have all this dang fun doing it.


	4. A Vow Not Quite Divine

“Lumena,” Helga sighed, and made the wool at the top of her distaff glow white as if bleached, and whiter like the sun was upon it, and whiter still until Sister Justina winced and put a hand up to shield her eyes.

“Alright,” she said. “That’s enough of that.” Her sleeves were rolled up again, and her hands were cool and dry as they tilted Helga's head to the side and examined her throat carefully. “No headaches? No trouble sleeping? Open your mouth, let me see your tongue.”

Helga stuck it out obligingly, and shook her head to both the questions. “No,” she said when Justina turned away. “I slept fine, and I feel fine, and I’d like to get dressed, please.”

“Eager to work?” Sister Justina asked, then laughed her dry laugh, but she kept sneaking glances at Helga as though she might tip over at any moment or suddenly turn into a frog.

Helga kicked her heel against the stool and considered going back to the weaving hall. “Sister Gwendolyn says the Abbess said I could start weaving the Fourth Station soon.” She thought about it some more, sitting at her little loom and weaving the threads together into Mary’s face. It had seemed exciting not four days ago, but now her throat clogged as she shut her eyes and imagined it. “Sister Gwendolyn said I can’t add any roses because it’s a sad occasion and not fit for celebration, but I think the Abbess might let me put in one because everyone says she found roses on the hill when she decided to build the abbey.”

“Roses don’t belong on the Stations of the Cross,” Sister Justina said firmly. “Not even one, not even a small one. However, I will tell the Abbess you would like to weave a tapestry for the Chapter House, and you may put roses on that if you wish.”

“What’s wrong with roses?” Geiri demanded from his bed. “I think they’re a fine flower for a goddess to have. Let the girl make roses if she wants to.”

“ _Thank_ you, Geiri,” Sister Justina said, “but I believe I know more about than you do, considering you will not even stop saying that Mary, Queen of Heaven, is her own, separate goddess, which she very much is _not_.”

“She’s queen, ain’t she? Queens are all that they wish to be and I’ve yet to know a woman who doesn’t wish to be a goddess,” he said, and at Sister Justina’s flat stare said, “I have ears, woman! I listen to what women say when I wish to!”

“You’ve never listened to a woman in your life” Sister Justina snapped and fumbled, red faced, making the bottles on the table clink together.

Geiri waited until Sister Justina had turned away to take up another potion for Helga to drink before he looked at Helga and winked at her cheerfully. He was wearing a shirt, under Sister Margaret’s great castigation, and the burns across his chest were hardly visible except where he’d left the buttons off.

He and Sister Justina had gotten into a great, shouting row earlier about whether he might go off for a while and join his friends where they were camping in the far pasture. Geiri wanted to “—drink and shout and stagger about like a heathen!” Sister Justine hissed, and wanted it badly enough that when the sister had refused to let him leave the infirmary, he called the Sister Justina several awful things that Helga had found very educational.

Helga could sympathize—she’d been here two days in the bed across of him, and only Sister Gwendolyn and Thomas visiting several times each day was keeping her from going mad, never mind how strangely they acted since she’d spelled Geiri well again. It made her itch terribly, under her skin. Even thinking of it now, her spindle was flying in sloppy, erratic circles, yanking wool off the distaff furiously to tangle it up.

She frowned at it, and with great concentration made it stop, but as soon as she looked away, she could hear it clattering about again, bouncing off the stone floor as it spun.

Just that morning the color of Helga's under-tunic had changed twice without her say-so. “Her bloody magic’s leaking, and it’s not surprising considering you’ve kept her in here like a prisoner!” Geiri had roared when Sister Margaret had yelled at Helga for that. “Either let the girl outside to run about, woman, or stop screeching at her like some great tit-less harpy!”

Helga knew with great jealousy that Geiri’s magic didn’t get away from him at all, and he had told her it was because he used a _wand_ , one the Abbess was holding in trust until he could manage to stand from his bed without falling. But Helga still couldn’t imagine trading her distaff or even her crook for a stick, and telling him so had made him laugh so hard he’d clutched his sides and wheezed.

“Tell my niece that,” he commanded Helga when he’d gotten his breath back. “But do it here, where I can see her face.”

And Helga wanted to, only the North-girl hadn’t come back in the whole two days they had spent lying in the infirmary beds under Sister Justina’s watchful eye. In fact, just the rich man had come in. Geiri had shouted, “Einar, you soppy goat’s tits of a bint!” when he saw him, and had devolved into their rough language, shouting loudly at each other as Sister Justina shrieked at them both, and told Helga furiously that “No, you may _not_ use those words! You live in the Lord’s house, for God’s sake!”

It had ended with both men embracing, and the rich man bowing to Sister Justina and Helga both before he clomped out again. Helga had noticed his sword, missing from his side, and had tried to ask Geiri about it, but Sister Justina had sent Helga to mind her mending while the sister hissed like a wet cat at Geiri, and gave him an examination that mostly seemed an excuse to deliver several solid thumps.

Personally, Helga thought the Abbess had been right after all—she was learning enormously from the North-men, and all of it was very interesting things. Even now, as Sister Justina made her drink one last chalky potion—“It will taste worse coming back up, so keep that down, Helga!”—Geiri was being interesting, whittling at a thin wooden branch to make it smooth all around.

“Very well,” Sister Justina sighed, as Helga failed to reproduce the potion. “You’re still a sight greener about the face than you ought to be, but maybe some fresh air will help.”

Geiri harrumphed, but Sister Justina staunchly ignored him. “Try not to get into any more trouble,” she told Helga, and smoothed Helga's hair back a moment.

“Yes, Sister,” Helga said, feeling a little ashamed. The North-men weren’t her fault, and neither was having to save Geiri, and she certainly couldn’t stop his foul-mouthed shouting, but Sister Justina had a way of looking at Helga, on just this side of disappointed, that had Helga scuffling her feet on the rush mats and keep her eyes down. Helga thought it massively unfair.

“You may go,” Sister Justina said, “And God preserve you, stay out of the far pasture!”

“But!” Helga gasped. She wanted to go nowhere except the far pasture, to go see the North-men camp. Thomas had told her in a whisper that it was fearsome—“They have demons dancing in the fire! And they sing strange chants, I bet to keep the demons chained!” Helga didn’t believe it one whit, because Thomas was a massive liar, but she desperately wanted to see for herself.

“No,” said Sister Justina, firmly. “The Reverend Mother was very clear in her instructions that none of us are to go there, Helga. Stay out of the far pasture or I’ll have your hide!”

“Let her go where she wills,” Geiri said, the stick in his hands breaking with a snap. “We’re hardly going to bother her! The way you talk, you’d think we go around raping little girls like her and bloody liking it!”

Helga looked between them, clutching at her distaff, her eyes wide. No one talked to Sister Justina like that, and the strange, big-bellied girl they’d received two years ago to be a novitiate had been thrown out by her ear when she kept trying. But Sister Justina just had a hand over her eyes, and she gave a groan, and waved her other hand at Helga. “Go,” she said weakly. “Before you are witness to a murder, and lose what little innocence you might have left after listening this man speak.”

It seemed like nothing would go flying, and the sister’s distaff wasn’t even floating behind her threateningly. Helga trotted to the door and slipped out of it just in time to hear the sound of crockery breaking, and Sister Justina shouting, “Oh, for the love of God!”

The door shut with a snap. Helga booked a faster retreat, stepping across the grass in the cloister and toward the kitchen. Sister Gwendolyn was washing dishes in the big sink, her sleeves rolled up and little wisps of hair escaping her bandeau. She looked up as Helga came clattering in, and smiled.

“She’s let you go at last,” she cried, and set down the soapy rag. “And you must be half-starved, on gruel for three days. Come, and sit, and let me make you something to eat. There’s buns left from the morning.”

She bustled about the kitchen with a light step, fetching a plate, and honey, and butter from the cool cupboard, and frowning when she saw Helga still standing.

It was the queerest thing, but Helga felt shy about Sister Gwendolyn, after seeing her face covered in flour and damp-eyed when Helga had be-spelled Geiri. She ducked her head when Sister Gwendolyn tried to lift her chin, and felt as though at any moment she might start crying fat, confused tears.

“Well,” Sister Gwendolyn said. “You’ve gone all pale, so mayhap you’d better take this outside. The sun will pink those cheeks right up!”

Helga watched as Sister Gwendolyn wrapped up the buns in a napkin, and came, and tucked them into her hand. She felt babyish, when she darted forward and hugged the sister about the middle, but a moment hadn’t even passed and Sister Gwendolyn had put up a hand to stroke her hair. “Your crook is in the barn,” Sister Gwendolyn said softly. “Why don’t you go have your dinner and harass the sheep, and I’ll see if I can’t fix the mess you’ve made of your spindle while you do.”

Helga sniffled, and nodded against Sister Gwendolyn’s shoulder.

“I know everything seems like it’s changing,” Sister Gwendolyn told her gently. Helga shut her eyes and pressed in tighter, because it did, and the pit of her stomach started to hurt terribly when she thought of it. Even Sister Justina was looking at her differently now, like maybe _Helga_ had changed, peering at Helga out of the corner of her eye.

“We’ll sort it out,” Sister Gwendolyn promised. “Oh, my sweet, I’ll make sure everything comes out fine.”

Sister Gwendolyn fixed everything she set her mind to. Helga felt a little bit better. She stepped away, wiped her nose on her sleeve, and gave Sister Gwendolyn a watery smile.

“Go on then,” the sister said. “Give me your distaff, and go check on the sheep. The Reverend Mother has told me that you’re in charge of them so long as we have guests camping about their pasture. In fact, she’s left those poor little lambs on the headland since our guests came.”

Helga's eyes went wide. “ _I_ get to look after the sheep,” she said slowly.

Sister Gwendolyn laughed. “Yes, and don’t abuse the privilege,” she said. “If I find you’ve been bothering the sheep _or_ our guests, hmm, overly much, I shall rescind the offer at once and go tend the flock myself.”

“Yes, sister!” Helga cried, and crammed the napkin into her belt pouch. She darted in, and hugged the sister again quickly, and dashed out the door before she could change her mind and call Helga back.

She could hear Sister Gwendolyn’s laughter in the kitchen yard, and it trailed behind her like ribbons in the wind as she went stepping past the barn to collect her crook, and into the orchard. Helga was madly starving, but she wanted to catch a look at the camp, and her bare feet danced in the dirt in excitement as she jumped to pull an apple from the tree branches above her.

Smoke was washing into the sky. She could see it through the tree branches, and she tilted her head back and looked for interesting demon shapes. But it just looked like regular smoke, and so she crept to the orchard wall, hissing when her steps broke twigs and crushed leaves as she peered beyond it.

The drooping pasture fences cut through the grass, and huddled beyond those was a camp much smaller than she thought it would be. A handful of tents were pitched, and smoke rose into the air, and she could see men moving about and hear, distantly, their speech, but there was nothing special to the place.

She’d curse Thomas, that nasty liar, for making her imagine all manner of strangeness and oddities would simply rise from the ground and fall from the sky. Feeling foolish, Helga kicked a clod of dirt, and shouldered her crook, and marched out into the path.

If there were no fire demons, and slavering evil wolves, and giants big enough to swallow men whole, then those North-men were not nearly interesting enough to stop and stare at, especially when Geiri said hardly any of them besides him and his niece spoke in a civilized tongue!

Helga put her eyes ahead, and marched resolutely toward the white shapes doting the headland before her. This must be how Sister Justina felt, she thought, this being so mad she’d smack something that even moved in a way she didn’t like.

If the North-men weren’t going to attack them, and they weren’t going to go away, the least they could do was be interesting while they made everyone at the abbey nervous.

Only Helga still felt a strange pit in her stomach as she came up on the stand of tents, and she gripped her crook a little tighter, and walked a little faster, her heart thundering in her chest. Geiri had promised none of them would hurt her, but Sister Justina had seemed to concerned, but Sister Gwendolyn had told her it was alright, that the Abbess said it was alright—

A shout came from her right. Helga put the end of her crook delicately into the dirt of the path, and turned, slowly, to look.

It wasn’t the richly dressed man, but it was _another_ richly dressed man, who smiled at her open-mouthed and said something Helga couldn’t understand. In one of his hands was a plate with a meat she could smell, and oh, it vexed her stomach! In his other hand was a horn, and Helga thought there might be wine in it, because the color of it was dark almost to the top.

She stared at him, her mouth watering at the smell of the meat, and shook her head, bewildered.

But he only said something else, still smiling, and put his hands out, offering the plate and the horn to her. It smelled monstrously good, and Helga felt regret already starting the bloom as she shook her head and said firmly, “No, thank you.”

The man’s brow started to furrow, and he took a step forward, starting to say something, and Helga took a step back, and raised her crook from the dirt, and then a body was moving between them, and snapping something in the North-man language, low and angry-sounding.

It was the North-girl, and she said something else and she and the man argued, fiercely for a moment, before he bowed to her, and then behind her, to _Helga_ , and offered the plate and the horn to the North-girl instead.

She took only the plate, and waved away the horn with a fierce toss of her hand, and waited where she was until the man had gone back to the camp and settled himself around the fire with the others. Helga watched some of the men pat the man with the horn on the back, and say something that made him laugh, and when she turned back the North-girl, she was watching Helga with a strange look on her face.

“He wanted you to eat with him,” she said to Helga, sounded very offended. “I told him piss off, you won’t heal his warts. I told him if he tried to show them to you, we would curse him!”

Helga slapped a hand over her mouth to keep in the startled shriek of laughter. “That’s what he wanted?” she asked in a strangled voice. “He _said_ that?”

“No,” the girl said. “But he meant it. You would have sat, and turned, and _seen_ them, and then my uncle’s knarr would have one less man.”

A hysterical giggle bubbled out of Helga's throat. The girl was grinning with neat white teeth, and Helga's face felt hot.

“I told him you’d rather eat with sheep,” the girl said. “I told him we’d both rather eat with the sheep.” She bounced on her heels, and waved the plate of meat, and Helga felt her stomach gurgle. “We go, yes?”

“Yes, alright,” Helga finally said, and laughed again. She and the girl started down the path, and Helga swung her crook merrily and felt rather pleased.

“I’d not have cursed him,” she told the girl after a few minutes of companionable silence. “I’d have thumped him over the head.” She shot a glance at the girl out of the corner of her eye, and saw her grinning widely again. “It’s oak straight through,” Helga confessed, brandishing her crook about. “It’s not my crook that’d have cracked.”

The girl laughed loudly and Helga felt as pleased as if she’d made somber Edward laugh, or given Mary Alyson the giggles. She bounced as she walked, and laughed herself, feeling it bursting out of her chest, feeling like she was glowing with joy.

It startled a lamb they passed, and the poor lamb took off furiously, kicking up its heels and bleating as it ran for its mother, and that was funnier, and so they kept laughing, until finally Helga could laugh no more, her stomach aching with it. They’d left the beaten dirt path behind long ago, and Helga threw herself onto the grassy rise of a cairn, and declared, “I cannot possibly go any further!”

The girl huffed another laugh, and lowered herself down more carefully onto the ground. “All this walking,” she said with some pleasure. “There is no walking on ships. I have missed it.”

Helga looked around herself at the sweetly rolling hills, and the sheep scattered across them, and couldn’t imagine ever leaving them and being happy someplace else. Nowhere else would be as nice as here, as familiar as the very place she’d been born and grown. “Don’t you miss your home?” she asked, and rolled over onto her stomach to stare at the girl.

“Some days, yes,” the girl said. She had taken the knife from the chain hanging down her belt, and was cutting the meat into pieces. “I miss my family. I miss our house and all the places around it. But I like to travel, and learn with my uncle, and every day that I am with him I see something strange or learn something new that I would not know if I had stayed at my home instead.”

She put away her knife, and offered Helga the plate, so Helga pushed herself up and fetched the buns from her belt pouch and divvied them in half, and they sat eating. “My uncle,” the girl said in between bites, “he always says about me, ‘Rowena would give an eye and drink from Mimir’s well if she could. She will not be satisfied until she knows all that Mimir does.’” She went on hotly, “And I won’t be, I refuse to be.”

Helga ate the last of her meat, melting and fragrant, and licked at her fingers. “Rowena's a nice name,” she said at last, turning over what the girl had said in her head. “Who’s Mimir?”

The girl—Rowena—laughed. She set down the plate she’d been balancing on her knee, and sang in a low, pleasant voice, 

" _I know where Odin’s eye is hidden,_  
deep in the wide-famed well of Mimir;  
mead from the pledge of Odin each morn does Mimir drink.”

“That’s nice,” Helga said. “You sing well.” She looked up at the low clouds moving across the sky, and followed their path, thinking that she had never heard of Mimir at all. She figured it was one of the North-men’s stories. “Why’s his well so famous then?”

“It holds all the knowledge of the world,” Rowena said. “Everything man has ever known, and everything man _will_ ever know.”

Helga plucked a piece of long grass, and put it to her mouth. She didn’t think a well like that could exist. Sister Margaret was always going on about prophecies and fortune-telling, but Sister Justina said no one could see into the future and only God and the Heavenly Host ever knew what was going to happen before it did. All the prophets in the Bible had to learn it from God, and Helga thought that made more sense than going and drinking a little water and knowing what would happen.

She put the piece of grass into her mouth, and chewed the end. It’d be rude to tell Rowena that, though, so she only nodded peaceably. “ _If_ anyone could find it,” Helga said, “I bet you would. You know so much already, like the spell you used to make me see all those lights when I healed Geiri.”

She glanced over at Rowena, and saw her face go red. “Do you want to get out of the sun?” Helga asked, sympathetic. She thought wistfully about splashing in the pond, then stretching out in the shade of the trees her mother had planted along the edges of it.

“No,” Rowena said. And then, “Yes. And that spell was nothing, only a true-seeing spell, a child’s spell. I will teach it to you.”

Helga's face was damp with sweat. She wiped at it, and used her crook to push herself to her feet. “I’d like that,” she said, feeling pleased as she grabbed Rowena's hand to hurry her along. “Sister Gwendolyn—she’s one of the sisters who helped Geiri—she’s taught me a lot, but she says she doesn’t know that spell, and neither does Sister Justina, and I’m too frightened to ask the Abbess.”

“They don’t know it?” Rowena asked, and swung their hands. “But it’s such a simple spell, truly, and they knew the spell you used to heal my uncle!”

“Oh,” Helga said, and pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. “But they don’t know that one either.”

Rowena stopped, and their twined hands pulled Helga to a stop, too. Rowena’s eyes were wide, and her mouth open a little as she struggled in a breath. Helga watched with some concern, wondering if she’d gotten too much sun.

“They don’t know that spell?” Rowena gasped after a moment. “The healing spell? But you—” She shut her mouth, and stared harder at Helga.

“No,” Helga said slowly, wishing Sister Gwendolyn was there to help her explain it. “I made it up right then, see, and haven’t had time to teach it to them yet.”

Rowena stared, paling, and Helga untangled their hands, and put both hands to her crook. “It’s not hard!” she said. “Only, everyone does it. It just seems so much easier to have a spell for what you need than to try and make do.”

She was a little frightened at how wide Rowena's eyes were, as if Helga was some odd and uncomfortable new creature. It was as if Rowena was going to pick her apart with just her eyes, and spread her on the ground like a haruspex did a hare, and divine some mystical strangeness from her insides. “It’s not as queer as you make it seem to be!” Helga cried, and turned and fled up the hill, towards the pond. She was not running, but nearly so.

There were ewes and lambs a plenty at the water. Helga bullied her way through the crowd, the sheep watching uncaring, or drinking slowly or chewing at pond weeds, and stuck her head into the water, sputtering as she pulled it out.

It hardly helped her burning cheeks. She gasped in and out, and washed sweat from her face with quick wipes of her damp hands, and drank enough water that she felt fit to burst, and still that bubbling feeling fought inside her, and she saw Rowena's eyes when she shut her own, but not as they were that afternoon. She saw them as a deep and burning blue, nearly purple, as they had been when Helga had healed Geiri, and the whole room had glowed with phantom light.

There was a crunch of grass and weeds as Rowena knelt beside her, and drank from her own cupped hands. Helga glanced at her, and saw she was nearly as red as Helga felt, and that feeling abated. Rowena would no more pick her apart than she would attack the Abbess—it would be madness even for her to try.

“I’m sorry,” Helga said softly, laying her damp hands on her lap. “You frightened me, is all.”

Rowena's hands were warm on Helga's arm. The world fractured into rainbows from the flecks of water caught in Helga's eyelashes, and everything swam, but she could see Rowena's eyes through the shine. They were wide still, but dark and serious as well. “I will _never_ hurt you,” she told Helga.

Helga hadn’t even known Rowena's _name_ half an hour ago. She hadn’t known her at all three days before. She swallowed, hearing the wet click of her throat, and curled her fingers into her skirt, and tried desperately not to believe Rowena's words, but the hesitancy wouldn’t come. She felt obscenely comfortable with her.

Rowena took Helga's hand, and held it tightly. “I won’t,” she said again firmly, with the same hot surety that she had talked about finding the well, and wound their fingers together and tugged incessantly, until Helga had no choice but to unfold herself and follow her to the shade of the few stunted trees, or be dragged.

She didn’t want to say she believed Rowena, but Helga thought that she didn’t have to. Rowena's eyes were hard, and she withdrew her wand from her sleeve and set it upon her lap, and said, “Have you ever taken a vow before?”

“No,” Helga whispered. “But I don’t—I don’t think I ought to. All the sisters, they say it’s wicked.”

Those dark eyes caught her and burned. “No god will dislike this,” Rowena said. “No god will disallow this.”

The shade was cool against Helga's face, and the inside of her eyelids was sweetly dark. She took a breath. Everyone knew you had to keep a vow, never mind who you swore it to or why you swore it. That was why the sisters said it was wicked to swear one—you could trap yourself something nasty if you took a bad vow.

Rowena was a stranger to Helga, no matter how drawn she felt to her, or how her eyes had burned when Helga had true-seen her. But Helga had to _make_ herself feel hesitant, felt deep inside herself that Rowena wasn’t a liar and would have no trouble keeping her word, no matter what it was.

A wind swept across the headland, and caught Helga's hair, ruffled the back of her kirtle, tugged at her loose hem where it puddled at her feet. It was warm, like it carried the sunlight with it.

“Alright,” Helga said. “What will we—what are we vowing?”

Their hands were still twined. “I stand Rowena Halvorsdottir,” Rowena said, and Helga startled, but Rowena's grip was so fierce she couldn’t pull back. “I stand to bid my troth—Helga Gwensdottir is my gift-sister. She is a gods-gift that I will not deny.”

Chills chased down Helga's back, and her hand burned where Rowena touched it.

“I shall not forsake her,” Rowena said. “I shall let no harm come to her. I shall let no secret stand between us. I shall treasure her as precious always.”

Their hands were held above Rowena's wand, and a tongue of deep shadow came from it, and bound their hands from wrist across clasped hands to wrist again. Helga felt a flicker of panic building, and she tried frantically to suppress it when Rowena met her eyes.

“I don’t,” Helga whispered. “What do I—”

“Do you take me at my troth?” Rowena pressed. “Do you trust me at my word, and put your faith in me to keep it?”

The world spun dizzyingly. Helga gasped out, “I—yes,” and the shadow on their hands turned to ribbon, brilliant and shining like spun strands of gold, and slid from their fingers to flutter into Rowena's lap, resting across her wand.

Helga was keenly aware her hands were sweaty. She jerked out of Rowena's grip, and touched her fingers, her palm, and stared at the ribbon. “I don’t understand,” she said, feeling lost, feeling oddly guilty, feeling almost half-ashamed.

Rowena looked down, and picked up the ribbon, and held it out. “Take it,” she said hotly. “Bind your wool with it. Or tie your hair. Only, keep it with you,” and she smiled, and Helga felt that smile with a pang.

The ribbon was slick like water on her fingers. Helga clutched it, and felt a greed in her heart that she knew was a sin, and she wanted to feel bad about that, but she couldn’t.

“We don’t make spells,” Rowena said softly. Helga nodded, and didn’t look up, the ribbon cool in her hand. “We learn them, yes, and I am always learning new spells from the strangers we meet. But to make one out of nothing? I have only known two who did so.”

Slowly, Helga reached up, and undid the heavy weight of her braids, her wet hair spilling around herself. She parted it, and smoothed her hair with her fingers, and braided it again, neatly as she could. It was the richest thing she had ever worn, that golden ribbon, but she wound it into her hair all the same, better than wildflowers and brighter than them, too.

“I will teach you spells you have never even heard of,” Rowena said. “I will—I will give you a wand to learn them. We will stay together until we know all that the other does. And you will teach me to cast as you do, with your hands alone, and teach me how to make spells.”

“With a distaff,” Helga murmured, and tied the end of her braid.

Rowena's stare was keen on her when Helga looked up, her fingers still touching gently the end of her braid. “We cast with a distaff,” Helga said. “And we cast as pairs, most spells. It makes things easier.”

Those dark eyes shined. Helga blushed, and let her braid go, and fussed at the drape of her skirt. “I’ll teach you, I guess,” she said. “If the sisters say I might.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rowena's chant about mimir comes from "The Poetic Edda" by Henry Adams Bellows as presented by sacred-texts.com. rowena's vow is completely made up.


	5. Sorrow in Parting

“Honestly,” Helga said, giving the sheet a particularly vicious thump with her beetle. “I don’t know why she was so upset! _I_ didn’t swear anything, only that I believed Rowena would keep her word.”

“I don’t think it’s the particulars that has—do that more gently, please!—Sister Justina up at arms,” Sister Gwendolyn said. “If she’s told you once, she’s told you a hundred time—don’t swear any oaths. And you disobeyed her for a strange you’ve barely known four days.”

Helga set her beetle to hanging in the air, and hauled the sheet out of the soapy water. “ _You_ don’t seem upset,” she said. “Oh, Sister Gwendolyn, can’t you talk to her? She’s said I can’t see Rowena or Geiri, and she shouts at me something terrible every time I try and go into the infirmary.”

Sister Gwendolyn laughed, but Helga thought there was a strain to it, as if it hurt her some as it bubbled out of her mouth. “I don’t seem upset?” Sister Gwendolyn gasped, and put her hands to her hips. “Silly girl, you haven’t seen my poor hair! It’s gone white since yesterday’s supper, when Sister Justina had out of you where your newest hair ribbon had come from.”

Helga's face burned. She stared down at the sheet, lying coiled in the cool wash of the channel, and blinked furiously. “It didn’t seem so wrong when we were doing it,” she mumbled. Sister Justina had railed so fiercely that Helga had taken the ribbon out and stuffed it under the straw mattress and she hadn’t dared to put it back in since. “The ribbon’s pretty, that’s why I was wearing it, is all. And Rowena seemed so sincere when she said everything. It seemed so important to her.”

Sister Gwendolyn was silent. Helga kicked at the sheet to open it up further, and watched soap bubbles rise out of it and drift away. Her stomach hurt something terrible.

“God has given you a caring heart,” the sister said at last. “And time, I hope, will give you keen eyes and a swift mind to temper that. And until then, I feel it is my duty—as I’m sure Sister Justina does as well—to keep you from being hurt by that heart.”

“She promised _not_ to hurt me,” Helga said, and wound her hands into her hitched-up skirts so tightly that her knuckles ached. “And you, you said you’d make sure everything was alright. You said you’d fix it all.”

“And I’m trying to,” Sister Gwendolyn said very softly. Helga strained to hear the rest of it. “But you are making it harder, dear, and not easier.”

“I’m sorry!” Helga burst. She wrapped her arms around her aching stomach, and started when she felt Sister Gwendolyn wrap her arms around _her _. “Hush,” she told Helga. “It’s not impossible to work this knot out. The thread is a little more tangled. That’s all.”__

Helga pulled away carefully, and nodded. “I’m sorry I disappointed you,” she said. “Please don’t be mad. I can’t stand it when you’re mad at me.”

“I’m not mad,” Sister Gwendolyn said. “A little shocked that you and that girl would do something so serious, but not angry.” She cupped Helga's face, and smiled at her. “We’ll finish the washing, and then you may go weave while I speak to the Reverend Mother. Sister Justina’s likely already given her an earful, and I think there ought to be someone less outraged to speak to her next.”

There was a lump in Helga's throat. She swallowed past it, and said, “Yes, Sister.”

“Cheer up!” Sister Gwendolyn said and pulled Helga's beetle back to Helga's hand. Helga mustered a weak smile, her face still hot. She didn’t feel very cheerful.

Sister Justina had gone to the Abbess. There was nothing to be cheerful about.

* * *

The air was stifling hot. Helga rolled over onto her side and stared at the shadowed wall. Mary Alyson was like a warming pan beside her and all down Helga's back was damp with sweat. Somewhere in the cloister yard a night bird was singing brightly.

There was nothing for it. Helga slid herself out of bed and fumbled for her kirtle. _Lord, let Sister Justina be sleeping and Sister Margaret be in her cups or I shall surely be seeing Your Kingdom sooner rather than later._

The rush mats crinkled under Helga's feet as she crept for the door. She tiptoed into the hall, and looked down the length of it. All of the cells were dark, and she dared to breathe a little easier as she padded down the corridor, running her hand along the cool stone to tell her way. She was almost at the end, and her steps picked up when she heard the sleepy mumble behind her.

“Helga? What’re you doing?”

Damn and blast! Thomas as standing just outside his door, a small white figure in his nightshirt, rubbing at his eyes and squinting at her.

“It’s not any of your business!” Helga hissed. “Go back to sleep before a sister catches you about!”

Thomas took a few tottering steps forward. “ _You’re_ awake,” he whined. Helga could see the moment he realized she was dressed and had her distaff at hand—he threw down his arms and demanded, “Where’re you going?”

For a long pained second, Helga missed Edward. Never mind that he had his nose in the air all the time! At least when he was sticking it in the clouds, he’d been keeping it out of her business. “Go to bed, Thomas,” she said. “ _Please_.”

“Shan’t,” Thomas mumbled, and yawned himself further awake. “Sister Justina’s gonna be birthing devils ‘f she sees you sneaking around. She’s already madder than a wasp you were hanging all around the North-men when the Abbess said not to.”

Helga held herself very still, her heart in her throat, but she already knew there was nothing to be done. Thomas was sharper than a butcher’s knife.

He looked her over again, and said, slyly, “Bet you’re going to go hang around them _again_. ‘S nowhere else you’d go all dressed at night.”

“Mayhap I’m going to piss,” Helga said, “and didn’t much fancy the idea of fighting past Sister Margaret half-naked to get to the garderobe. You saw her at supper. She was half-bousy and it weren’t even fully nighttime yet.”

“Take your distaff with you to piss often?” Thomas demanded, and put his hands on his hips like he was going to scold her. “You’re a rotten liar, Helga.”

“And you’re just a nasty little wind-sucker!” Helga hissed. “Always poking your nose in where it doesn’t belong ‘cause you’re just jealous no one wants you about!”

Thomas let out a little shriek and tried to smack her, and Helga smacked him back, and they both froze when a clatter rose in the corridor. “Shuttup!” Helga snapped, and grabbed Thomas, and they both stumbled into his room.

There were voices, and an orange light washed across the walls as they went past. “We’ve been charged in holy trust to take care of her,” the Abbess was saying in her rough, creaky voice. “I cannot in good faith let her go gallivanting off with strangers none of us know. She will end up dead—or worse—and we will be at fault.”

“We cannot keep her here forever,” Sister Gwendolyn said. “Already she is outgrowing what I can teach her, Reverend Mother. Sometimes she looks beyond this place with such longing! And I would not, I wouldn’t see such spirit stifled by simply letting her parents marry her off.”

Helga's hands loosened where they gripped at Thomas’s nightshirt. She turned blindly toward the corridor, but all she saw was the flickering shadows across the stone.

They had stopped walking. There was no sound of footsteps, only Sister Gwendolyn’s light, fast breathing and the Abbess’s voice. “Have they written?” the Abbess asked. “Or made mention of that?”

“No,” Sister Gwendolyn said. “But I love Rhona as if she were my blood. I know her just as if she were my sister. It is only a matter of time, before she sends for Helga to join them in town and makes her a match. I cannot bear to see her go to it.”

“I have given you much lee in raising this child,” the Abbess said. “You love her so greatly, as if the Lord Himself brought her to you. How could I not? But I cannot allow this, Gwendolyn. I could not when that man asked me to, and I cannot when you have asked me to. I shall not see it done.”

“But to send her off!” Sister Gwendolyn cried.

“She cannot take vows,” said the Abbess. “And she cannot go with them. And you are begging me not to let her be married. She cannot stay here forever, Gwendolyn. What other recourse is there? What other path may she take?”

Helga's heart felt as if it would burst inside her chest. She let go of Thomas, and pressed a hand to her mouth. They were discussing _her_. As if she were just a little child, or, or sheep to be sent off one way or another! As if she didn’t have her own thoughts on the matter of her future!

There was acid on her tongue. She grabbed at her distaff where it lay against the wall, and took two quick steps forward, and stopped fast as Thomas fisted at the back of her kirtle. “Don’t!” he whispered keenly. “You’ll get in trouble. Helga!”

She stopped, nearly at the doorway, and heaved in a desperate breath. But the Abbess and Sister Gwendolyn were walking again now, their footsteps fading down the hallway. “—must find a way,” Sister Gwendolyn was saying. “I promised, Reverend Mother.”

“And you will not break it,” the Abbess said. And then the door at the end of the corridor was closing, and Helga couldn’t hear anything except her own shaking breathing, and Thomas saying, “Helga?” soft and concerned.

“What?” she managed, feeling as if she might fall.

“They’re going to send you away?” Thomas asked in a small voice.

“I don’t know,” Helga whispered. Once last winter, Mama had combed through Helga's long hair, and said how lovely it was. How pretty it made her, and how much the boys in town might like it. Helga had tasted acid them, her gorge rising at the thought even as Mama had laughed, and said maybe in a year or two Helga would join them.

But she hadn’t said anything to the sisters, Helga was sure of it, and so it hadn’t seemed as if it would ever happen. As if it could ever happen.

Helga pulled herself out of Thomas’s grasp. “Go back to bed,” she told him. “Or yell the whole abbey down. Do whatever you want. I don’t care.”

She marched out into the corridor, and heard Thomas creep up beside her and slip his hand into hers. His was frightfully warm, or mayhap she was just cold all over. But he held her hand the whole way, as they crept through the abbey and to the kitchen, and then into the kitchen yard.

Sister Margaret was asleep at the table, her head on her arms and snoring fit to bring the roof down. Thomas let out a shocked giggle when he saw her, and Helga felt a laugh bubble in her own throat. It didn’t seem so threatening now, the conversation they had overheard. Not creeping through the kitchen, and catching up Thomas before he kicked the wine bottle lolling on the floor.

In fact, it all seemed to fade as they went through the orchard. Helga looked at the stars through the leaves and branches, and then ahead at the roar of orange and red and white silhouetting the outcrop of the North-men’s tents.

They could hear loud chanting ahead, and roars of laughter, and the crackle of the truly impressive bonfire they’d built.

Thomas’s hand grew tighter around Helga's, and she laughed out loud. “You’re not scared, are you?” she asked, and skipped a little. “They’re not bad at all! I’ll introduce you to my friend, Rowena. She’s the cleverest person you’ll ever meet, I bet. More clever than the Abbess, even.”

“More clever than Edward?” Thomas asked.

“By loads,” Helga said, and tugged him forward toward the light. They slipped between one tent and the next, and stared. They’d cut down a tree _somewhere_ , and part of it was burning and part of it was lying in cut logs, with men sitting on them. They were gathered around the spit, where meat was being turned, and watching a man who stood before the spit. He had a horn in one hand, and was taking long deep drinks out of it between chanting and singing something wild-sounding.

Thomas gripped Helga's hand tighter, and she squeezed back, looking at the men, looking for a long slide of raven hair. A hand landed on her shoulder, and she jumped and near pulled Thomas into the air with her.

“Helga!” Geiri roared. “My missing daughter, returned to us again!” He bounded forward, and pulled her to him, and kissed both of her cheeks. Helga saw him mostly as a red and dark blur, and he stank so strongly that she squealed and pulled away.

“You’re worse than Sister Margaret!” she cried. “She at least quits the drink before she smells like the brew house!”

He laughed, his head thrown back, his face getting redder and redder. “A worthy warrior, then!” he shouted. “I will challenge her to a game of cups, and we shall see who loses!”

A rush of air thick with the smell of smoke came up behind Helga, and Rowena said, “If she’s the one in their kitchen, you’ll have to peel her off the table first.”

Helga turned to try and see her, but she was already moving, circling Helga, to see Thomas. Rowena bowed low, and asked in a voice so serious she might have been declaring war, “Come to look after your sister?”

Thomas pulled his hand from Helga's, and tilted his chin up. “Yes,” he said. “Sister Justina said she’s not to be around you.” He sucked in a breath and announced, “She said you’re a _wicked_ influence.”

Helga wished at once that she could sink into the earth. “Thomas!” she shrieked, and smacked at him. “They’re guests of the Abbess! You may not speak to them like that!”

“Sister Justina says they’re heathens,” he cried back. “And I asked Sister Olympia just to be sure, and she said they don’t pray to God!”

Geiri was laughing again, as if this was the funniest thing he had ever heard. Even Rowena had a hand over her mouth to hide the smile.

“The Abbess can have heathens as guests if she wants to,” Helga said, despairing. “And I’ll box your ears if you’re so rude to them again. Sister Gwendolyn’s raised you better than that.”

But Geiri was shaking his head, and throwing a huge arm across Thomas’s little bird shoulders. “No, no,” he laughed. “It shows he has fire,” and he thumped Thomas’s chest with a meaty hand. “We have different gods,” he said, and started to pull Thomas away, towards the other men. “See that man? Einar, my friend, he sings of them. Come sit, and eat, and we will be each other’s’ guests. I will tell you what he is singing so you understand too.”

Thomas squinted up at him, and sighed. “Fine,” he said. “But don’t think you can make me a heathen, too.”

Helga covered her face with her hands. Rowena was laughing aloud now, and she leant against Helga so they both shook with it.

“Little brother,” Geiri said. “I don’t think your god would let you go, even with a fight. He’s a jealous god, aye?”

Thomas thought a minute, his face all scrunched up, and Helga hid her own face in her hands. It was no wonder he’d never been allowed to come and greet guests to the abbey before, Helga thought. Sister Margaret couldn’t be wrong _all_ of the time.

“He doesn’t like other gods,” Thomas said. “And he smites loads of people.”

“Well, I have no wish to fall prey to him,” Geiri said. “Surely he is a fearsome God. No, there will be no fighting here. Only eating, and stories, and small beer that you might not thirst. Come, boy.”

He steered Thomas away with a hand across his thin, stark shoulder blades, and Thomas went without even a glance back, head turning wildly as he stared around himself at the men who greeted him as if he was their own child, obligingly making room. Helga let out a breath, and felt some tension in her ease.

“Here now,” Rowena said, and looped an arm around Helga's shoulders. “My uncle is a fine man with children. Your brother will be treated like a prince. We may leave him and speak on our own business, and he won’t notice a lack at all.”

“Alright,” Helga said, helpless, and let Rowena tug her away, past the ring of tents and into the dew-damp grass. The sky unfolded above them, washed with a hundred thousand stars, the light bright about their faces.

“I went looking for you,” Rowena told her, and tugged Helga down across from her. “I saw you creeping away through the trees. I thought they might have locked you somewhere, and you had just now escaped.”

“They didn’t lock me up,” Helga sniffed. “Only kept me so busy I couldn’t leave without shirking one work or another.”

“You poor thing,” Rowena said, half smiling her teasing smile as she leaned over to tweak the end of Helga's braid. “Don’t they know they ought not to separate companions such as us?”

It was massively unfair that Helga felt so shy around Rowena now, when she had been revealed as no sword-wielding barbarian. She ducked her chin, and picked at the edge of her skirt until she felt brave enough to say, “And what type of companions are we?”

“Sworn ones,” Rowena said at once, without any more prompting. “And true ones. Helga, sweet, Geiri’s been talking to your Goodmother. Now he’s healed, he wants to leave. We’ve wares to take home and summer will end sooner rather than later. None of us are keen to face the sea during winter.”

Helga felt all of the good, warm feeling in her body disappear. It was as if the corridor was dark around her again, and her terribly alone in it. Rowena would leave, her pretty words like chaff in the wind, and Helga would be sent away.

“Come with us,” Rowena said at once, and pulled at Helga's arms until she could grasp her hands. “Your home here is good, and your sheep are fine, but there’s a world out there you couldn’t even imagine. There’s a hundred, a thousand new things to see and again as much that we don't know. We can learn them together.”

All her breath caught in her throat. Helga pulled her hands away, and heard the Abbess speaking faintly in the back of her head, and knew deeply and terribly what had already happened.

“Geiri’s asked to take me along, hasn’t he?” she croaked out, and reached for her distaff. The spindle was turning around in the grass, staining the wool, and she clutching it up to still it.

“He’s asked,” Rowena said. “He’s begged. He feels like I do—you can’t stay here, with no one to teach you and nothing left to learn.”

Leave the abbey? Go away from her siblings and the weaving room and Sister Gwendolyn? From the Abbess, who’d taken her in under oaths to raise her well and keep her safe? Only, if Helga didn’t go with Rowena, she _still_ couldn’t stay there.

_Lord, please help me. I cannot see a path I can walk that won't hurt myself, or others. Send me a sign. Anything, a bird or star or warm wind. Please, what must I do?_

“They’re going to send me away,” she said, closing her eyes before her tears could spill over. “My mother is going to marry me off if they don’t. But the Abbess said, I cannot go with you.”

“You’re nearly grown, not some little chit,” Rowena said. “They can’t keep you here under force, I shan’t let them. Guest rights would mean _nothing_ if they tried. Helga, please. Come away with us.”

Helga hadn’t been so little when Mama and Da had left them at the abbey the first time. She could remember the dark, arched ceiling of the nave, and holding Da’s hand, weeping because she didn’t wish to be left. How the Abbess had sworn to her parents to watch for them and raise them.

She had sworn to the Lord that they would be safe, that she would make it so.

Helga's chest ached—to make the Abbess break one of her vows to God? Whatever punishment God rained down, frogs or bugs or hail like stones, Helga would deserve it and more. She felt sick even thinking about it, to make such a pious women do such a thing.

And for herself to do such a thing, to turn from Him in such a way. To cause such a treachery when just that morning she’d knelt in the nave and said her prayers with such faith. He could not mean for her to do that.

And Sister Gwendolyn, she could never forgive Helga.

The tears were coming harder now. Sister Gwendolyn had been right, this was only making things harder, for her and for Rowena.

From the camp, as the breeze shifted, her throat filled with the taste of smoke and ash.

“Don’t,” she begged, and struggled to her feet. “Oh, Rowena, I can’t. I cannot—it would shame people if I were to go. I would shame myself, and that would spoil everything.”

“But you want to go,” Rowena said, and chased after Helga to grab her hand. Oh, if only Rowena would get angry! Then she’d turn away and Helga could feel less like she was breaking something rare and precious, snapping it apart with every word.

“I can’t!” she cried. “And I oughtn’t have let you swear anything to me, or said I would teach you. You’re leaving, and I’m leaving, and I wish I could take it all back!”

“No,” Rowena said, “You don’t.” Her face was lit afire in the wavering shadows from the camp. “Sweet, let me talk to your Goodmother. I can make her understand, you’ll see.”

Helga only felt tired now, and already the tears were passing. “No more promises,” she told Rowena. “The Abbess promised to keep me safe, and you’re naught but a stranger, no matter how many vows we take. I can’t go with you, Rowena. I’m to go where the Abbess sends me, at least until I’m grown.”

“Then I’ll come for you after,” Rowena said. “Don’t make me break my own vows just to help your Goodmother keep hers. I’ll find you, and bring you a wand, and see if you’ll say no to me then.”

Rowena sounded like when she’d spoken about her strange well. It thrilled Helga, but she tried not to let it warm her or comfort her overly much. She took her hand back. “I must put Thomas to bed,” she told her. “I’m in trouble already, and I don't think I could bear to make it worse. God be with you, Rowena.”

Rowena darted forward, and cupped her hand to Helga's cheek. “I’ll come to you,” she said, in a low voice. “You’ve put your faith in my troth. It wasn’t a mistake, you’ll see.” Her eyes were so very blue. Then she pressed her mouth to Helga's, only for a moment, and Helga's whole face burned with it.

And then there was a shout from the camp, and Helga stumbled back, dropping her spindle as she turned, and went racing through the grass back toward the others. She wanted to turn back and look, wanted to very badly, but she felt hot and sick and brilliant inside. If anything else erupted in her chest she might die from it.

* * *

The weaving house was empty except for the rhythmic rasp of Helga’s bobbins and clack of the warp weights. The afternoon light washed in gold across the blue of Mary’s cloak and the white of her wimple. Helga felt like she was floating, awash in light so fine and sweet it was like rose petals on her skin.

She could feel each breath she took was even and as perfect as the last. Her fingers were too nimble to tangle in the warp, and every thread settled into place with only the lightest of coaxing.

And she could feel herself weeping, tears slipping down her face in fine tracks and splashing onto her arms and chest. Lord, she wished she could stop crying, but since Sister Gwendolyn had come to her before supper and told her the North-men had gone, she’d been awash in tears.

The light was comforting, but it couldn’t keep her heart from breaking with longing, only soften the pain of it. Only let her know she was not alone, would never be alone. The Abbess might send her away, but Helga wouldn’t go alone because the Lord was with her. She hadn’t turned away from him, and never-mind how much she'd wanted to. Her heart was as full as it was empty, and she wept, and wove, and when the last of the sun slipped below the windows, she felt like a plain white cloth, wrung free of any stain or dye.

Sister Gwendolyn was waiting when Helga left the weaving house. She offered her arms, and Helga went to her, and pressed her face to her shoulder.

“Oh, my dear,” she told Helga. “Oh, my sweet dear.”

Helga thought Sister Gwendolyn understood without her even having to say anything. She tucked herself closer and let herself be rocked gently.

Finally, Sister Gwendolyn pulled away. “Come sit with me in the cloister. The air is fine and cool now.”

Night birds were singing in the yard. They rested their distaffs against a column and sat on the low ledge. Sister Gwendolyn took Helga's hand in hers and squeezed gently.

“When you first came to us,” she said softly, “you used to have a terrible time sleeping. I cannot count how many times I found you wandering in the night, so much that I checked up on you every hour, and kept my shoes at hand, that I might have to fetch you back.”

Helga couldn’t remember, and only shook her head when Sister Gwendolyn looked over. “I might have,” she said slowly.

Those days were all hazy in her mind, with only spots and pieces sticking out. Learning how to use a distaff. Being taught patiently how to write. Rocking Thomas in his cradle as she watched Sister Gwendolyn work. 

But Sister Gwendolyn remembered. “You did,” she said. “And it seemed ages until you settled to sleep through the night. My dear, I am not surprised you were up and wandering last night, when the Abbess and I took a walk. Nor am I vexed," and she squeezed Helga's hand. "I had only wished I told you myself, what you might expect in your future. You don’t seem the type that marries, my dear. I’ve known since you were small.”

Helga stared out at the cloister yard. She felt empty still, and blissfully blank, that it was like a splash of color upon than plain sheet when Sister Gwendolyn said, “I’ve a dear friend of mine, who left the convent rather than take her final vows. You remind me of her so much, that sometimes when you speak it’s a shock to turn and see she isn’t there. Madlen midwives in London now, and in three days’ time I will take you to join her.”

“Midwifery,” Helga said. She’d helped birth lambs and kids and once an ox calf. Small hands were good for tight jobs, and it was a powerful reward to sit in the dirt holding a squalling new little thing on her lap.

“You’ll find joy in it, I think,” Sister Gwendolyn said. “A great and worthwhile joy. I think it will be a good comfort. And Madlen is well read, and well-traveled. There is much she can teach you that I simply cannot.”

She’d told Rowena she was to go where the Abbess sent her, and last night she'd begged for a path she could walk without feeling like she was being torn in two. 

_Lord, is this what my hands were made for? Can I do this with kindness and grace when I feel there's nothing left in me? That I feel like I'm leaving everything good about me here when I go?_

She couldn't stay where she wanted, or go where she wanted, and oh how that hurt, but she didn't want to be miserable. She just wanted—

She wished—

"Alright," Helga said, and rubbed her hand across her eyes. "Thank you, Sister Gwendolyn. I'll go."

### End of Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> beetles are such a weirdly charming thing to call your laundry beating sticks? idk why, but im a little in love with that name!
> 
> in other news, this conclused part one. part two will feature a time skip and introduce new and familiar characters. honestly, now that i've caught up to my massive stack of reference books (an unpacked them!) im super excited to get into it.
> 
> [gaze upon my esoteric texts!](https://gyazo.com/580857ee4c80169da25e16a6a237ec5a)
> 
> and as always, thank you guys so much for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, Salazar Slytherin, and Godric Gryffindor deserved better, and I desperately want to give it to them. 
> 
> I'm trying to be as true to the time period as I possibly can, but the actual dates for some events will be hand-waved either sooner or later than their actual dates. Some things will also be hand-waved due to extraordinary characters or circumstances. All notes, references, and sources will be posted when this fic is complete. 
> 
> Want to talk about the world of immigrant song? Desperately need to yell at me about historical inaccuracies? Just want to hang out and chat about the Founders? I'm available [here](http://half-a-league.tumblr.com/) at my tumblr.


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